Reasons for plateauing and how to fix them

I've been on the slow carb diet for months it seems and I've stopped losing weight. I never lost a ton..started at 198 and now 184....but it's taken months. Beans and chicken meals, cheat day, PAGG, I do it all and I stay the same and can't figure out why. I also train for triathlon and run 4x/wk, swim 2x and bike 1x.

The Best Answer

1) Assuming that you are following the SCD to perfection (a HUGE assumption, btw), it sounds as if you are overtraining. In order to accomodate the 4x/week running, 2x/week biking and 1x/week swim, you must be training 6 or 7 days per week. That is insufficient time for your body to recover. When an athlete's body is given insufficient recovery time, you eventually enter a state of "catabolism" where you break down your own muscle tissue for food, as opposed to the fat. (For an example of this, look at all the "skinny but flabby" runners there are out there.) I'm no triathlon training expert, but you should experiment with adding more rest days to your training regimen OR drastically reducing your training volume per session in order to allow for more recovery.

2) You may not be eating enough on a daily basis to support the tissue repair your body needs due to the increased training load you are under. This would contribute to the catabolic effect mentioned above AND slow your metabolism down greatly.

3) You may not be following the SCD as well as you think. It never hurts to review your process and make sure you're hitting all your marks. When something doesn't work, I always go back to make sure I'm doing things correctly before I begin tinkering or substituting.

Hope that gives you some ideas. Also, insufficient sleep or lack of proper hydration could be contributing factors.